Replenishing the Soil

With national soil fertility depleted, there are only two ways by which producers can continue producing. The first and near-ubiquitous method is by pumping in relatively cheap energy in the form of petroleum-based fertilizers as a way to extract production from the soil at the expense of its future fertility. While this will, for a time, yield enough production to sustain the population, it is merely the desperate injecting of external energy as life support for an already dead system. Alternatively, we can pursue a strategy of generation, rather than extraction.

By adopting regenerative agricultural practices, we maximize photosynthetic energy capture, balancing flows of production today with energy stocked into the soil for tomorrow -- creating a resilient, and self-perpetuating loop of health and fertility.

Our Animals

After generations of farming subsidies and foolish breeding practices, modern cows are no longer capable of functioning within this system. Most cows of today require outside feed, selective grazing, and medicinal support in order to survive and breed, all to the detriment of the soil itself. This has driven a vicious cycle where raising a calorie of food requires more petroleum energy than caloric energy that is contained within that food. To fix the soil we must also fix the cow herself by returning to older genetic strains that allow her to fulfill her dual purpose as a tool for ecosystem management and the production of beef.

We are using Pineywoods cows crossed with good Mashona, Tuli, Aubrac, Murray Grey, Aberdeen Angus and SouthPoll bulls to develop a custom breed that is early-maturing, disease-resistant, requires no medical input, and can be grazed intensively and non-selectively to the betterment of the land.

Our System

True regenerative agriculture is about more than rotational grazing. At Smoke River Ranch, we employ every synergistic grazing methodology the prioritizes soil health and increased productive capacity. As strict adherents to the precepts of Ultra-High Density Grazing, we mimic the patterns of nature with tightly-grouped grazing mobs that graze each small paddock intensively and high utilization, after which each paddock is given sufficient rest for full recovery.

With the forage of 3 to 4+ paddocks per day fully consumed by the herd, we are able to mirror the migratory grazing patterns of the buffalo that originally made our land the lush prairiescape it once was.

Herdshares: A New Paradigm

The Herdshare system was designed to address the failing American food production environment, and restore agriculture to its rightful place as a community-centric cultural foundation. Combining a strict genetic program that selects for animal hardiness and resilience, a regenerative approach to grazing and land management, and an economic paradigm that places collaboration and granular ownership at the forefront, the Herdshare owner acquires what the market has thus far failed to provide: security.

Herdshares are custodial real assets stewarded together at scale. You own the cows, the farm manages them with our herd in our system, and then we split the calves. All cows in our herd are subject to, and benefit from our comprehensive genetics and management program.

By synthesizing real asset ownership and the preservation of semi-liquidity, the Herdshare Program offers a novel paradigm that brings together the communal security of the pre-industrial world and the scalability of the post-industrial world.

Learn More